The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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26 FEBRUARY 2017 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com On Camera During the past year or so Bantam Home & Energy started using in-vehicle cameras. Mounted on the windshield near or below the rear-view mirror, the camera records video of the road ahead in three-minute segments. The camera is activated by hard braking, hard turning or other out-of-the-ordinary maneuvers detected by sensors. In all, the camera can store four hours worth of three-minute segments. Mike Lynch, a company driver, demonstrated the system by driving the local roads in a service van, returning after a few minutes to download and play the recorded images on a laptop in the Bantam Home & Energy offi ce. The software program that comes with the camera enables users to consult a map on the screen that shows the vehicle as a red dot moving along the roads. The camera also captures trip data such as miles traveled and vehicle speed, which is also downloaded to the software program and presented onscreen. At the time Lynch demonstrated the system, the company had not recorded any accidents, but the company had received a complaint about the driving of a company vehicle, Lynch says. A review of video recorded of the moment showed that the complaint was unfounded, Lynch says. Joe DiFranco, vice president in the investigations division of Energi Insurance Services, Peabody, Mass., said in a presentation at the Southern New England Energy Conference last September that video recordings can infl uence an insurance adjuster, a jury and a judge. In the 1930s Bantam Supply Co., known as the "General Store," occupied the site where Bantam Home & Energy now stands. A rail line supplied the operation, which dealt in coal, lumber, feed, and in oil, kerosene and gasoline, says Aziz. His father, Paul, acquired Bantam Supply Co. in 1979. "My first job here was bagging coal," Aziz recalls. "It's a really hard job and it's not fun." Aziz was 16. The company marketed fuel oil, diesel, gasoline and kerosene until 1988, when Paul Aziz narrowed the focus to heating oil and diesel and diversified into propane. "We were always full-service, doing repair and maintenance," Aziz says, and in the 1990s the company expanded to installing furnaces and boilers, and then around 2000 into air conditioning, which Aziz called "an interesting transition" for the company's technicians. "It was different from anything they'd done before," Aziz said. Designing and installing air conditioning systems for residential and light commercial customers required Bantam's techs to learn a new set of skills and acquire new expertise. Peter Aziz bought out his father in 2006, and in November of that year, "We deliv- ered our first gallon of B2," he says. "We jumped in with both feet." In the beginning there were growing pains, he concedes. Biofuel based on palm oil was ill-suited for northern climes, he notes, and that threw the fuel's "green" credibility into question in the early years. But, Aziz says, Sprague Energy, Portsmouth, N.H., led in develop- ing an improved product for the market, notably developing biodiesel from soy and rapeseed that performed well in cold weather. "Now they've really worked that out," Aziz says, even while incorporating diverse sources such as yellow grease, rendered fats and biomass. Bantam delivered B20 in the 2015-2016 heating season, which included the coldest day—Feb. 14, Valentine's Day—recorded in the region: -17, Aziz says. "I was afraid my guys would be calling me with fuel-related problems, but there were no fuel-related problems with the B20," he recalls. Bantam blends its own product on site. "It burns cleanly," Aziz says, "with very little soot. Part of the reason for that is the low-sulfur fuel." Remote tank monitoring helps the energy marketer manage its propane accounts, which can have erratic or unpredictable consumption rates, says Jeffrey Crampton, operations manager. The monitoring system measures tank volume by percentage, and is set to give alarms at two levels. This is particularly helpful in the fall when swimming pool heaters run at the homes of weekenders, for example. The alarms, in the form of emails to Bantam's office, let the energy marketer know that a tank is running low. "The customer never knows" that the propane level was low, Aziz says, and that a timely refill averted a runout. "No matter how silver-tongued I am that day, it's never going to go as well as it would if we didn't let you run out," he says. The tank monitoring system is provided by SkyBitz, which is owned by Telular Corp., Atlanta, Ga. Aziz and Crampton say the system also is critical to managing residential propane accounts with appliances such as fireplaces, which, depending on how much they are used, can burn the fuel at hard-to-predict rates. Commercial propane accounts such as restaurants and greenhouses can be unpredictable too, Aziz notes. Ultrasound checks of customers' oil tanks are another service that Bantam added, six or seven years ago. Bantam uses the TankSure program offered by Boston Environmental, Portsmouth, N.H. "It's easier than getting down on your hands and knees in a basement with a flashlight" and trying to judge whether there's corrosion, Aziz says. Besides, a tank might look fine on the outside, but be deteriorating on the inside, he observes. About two or three years ago, Bantam switched to installing double-walled oil tanks exclusively, manufactured by Roth Industries, Watertown, N.Y., Aziz says. Aziz markets a "dynamic price cap to Bantam customers. "It protects them when the price goes up and when the price goes down," he says, but the company offers no pre-buy program. On service plans, the company offers a "deep discount" on repairs and mainte- nance with no exclusions, Aziz says. What does he mean by "deep?" "Twenty percent," he says. "It helps with customer retention." l F O N Bantam Home & Energy PHOTO COURTESY OF ENERGI INSURANCE SERVICES